Origin and Goal of the Human Being

Schmidt Number: S-1058

On-line since: 15th March, 2014

Lecture XVIII

The Future of the Human Being

Berlin
30th, March, 1905

In the talk on the great
initiates fourteen days ago, I allowed to myself to point to the fact
that the great initiates are basically the supporters of the future
ideals of humanity and that their force, their mode of operation consists
in the fact that they entail as their secret, have taken up as their
mystery and put it into the ideals in an appropriate way what becomes
obvious to the whole remaining humanity only in future. So that the
idealism of humanity, the future ideals of our race are expressions
of the masters' profound knowledge of the big spiritual world
principles. I pronounced at that time that the theosophical ideals which
come from the masters themselves differ from the ideals in life and
that they come from a real knowledge of the principles of nature and
not possibly from sensations such like: it should be that way, it is
right that way et etcetera

At that time, I pointed
to the fact that this is not prophecy in the bad sense of the word.
It is a kind of indication of the future as we have it also in the natural
sciences. As well as we exactly know from the knowledge of the material
laws of hydrogen and oxygen that they combine under certain conditions
and yield water, it is also with the spiritual laws, so that we can
say which the ideals of the human future are. The developmental law
leads the human being into the future. The initiate has to consciously
get out of the knowledge of the big world principles what he wants for
the future. This was one indication of the present talk given already
fourteen days ago. The other indication I gave in the talk about Ibsen's
attitude. I showed how Ibsen points brilliantly to the configuration
of the personality in our time and how he characterises what has developed
in our time and that he points to something higher that overcomes the
personality what we call individuality in theosophy.

We stand actually at a turning
point today. The great results of natural science have shown us how
on one side the materialistic observation has brought the biggest fruits,
how Darwinism and materialism extend into our time and we have to thank
to them for a big cultural progress; but on the other side that also
currents assert themselves preparing the future. New ideals arise just
in the most excellent spirits. Indeed, these spirits who point to a
distant future are not the so-called practical spirits, but the world
history advances differently than the practical people fancy it. I have
pointed to a pillar of idealism, to Tolstoy before. Today, however,
I would still like to point to a western spirit, to Keely (John Ernst
Worrell K., 1827–1898, inventor of a motor, based on “vibratory
energy”), the great mechanic who furthers us although his mechanical
idea is not yet a practical one. Some questions are connected with it
which may appear fantastic to the materialist. But at the same time
we want to get to know an idealism that is of another type than that
of the everyday life. It is the same that lived in the mysteries once.
What we spread today in popular talks lived up to the foundation of
the Theosophical Society in 1875 in the so-called secret schools. I
have pointed to the Rosicrucians repeatedly; also to the fact that one
can scholarly find nothing about the real secrets of the Rosicrucians.
Goethe was in close contact with the Rosicrucians; in his poem The Secrets
he expressed this clearly. We have taken all that from the past talks.

We want to occupy ourselves
with those big world laws which were announced in the mysteries as the
world laws of the future, as those world laws which the human being
has to conform to unless he wants to blunder into future in the darkness,
but that he is aware to face these or those future events as well as
the naturalist who goes to the laboratory knows that if he mixes certain
substances and combines them, he receives certain results. This, explained
popularly, can be heard only since 1875, since the foundation of the
Theosophical Society. That is why it cannot surprise us that the academic
literature contains nothing of these ideals of the future.

Now the question could arise,
and this question has often been put: Are these the unworldly idealists
generally who are apparently far away from any practise, who think out
the thoughts of future, which support life, first in their heads? Can
they be these? Has life not to be born from practise? Nevertheless,
they spin out thoughts only, they are daydreamers, and want to bear
the future? Only somebody who knows how one has to use the things of
the everyday life is able to intervene, and it is to him to intervene
in the practical life. Let me pick out examples of the pragmatist and
the idealist as a small intermezzo and show that the pragmatists did
not cause the great and real progress, but that these were the theorists
who created from the plenty of ideas and also brought about the future
in the everyday life.

Take the discoveries of
the 19th century. Wherever we go we can find nothing that does not remind
us of the steam power, of the telegraph, of the telephone, of the postal
system, of the railway et etcetera But no practitioner has invented
the railway. How have the pragmatists faced up to it? An example: when
in Germany the first railways should be built, when the railway should
be led from Berlin to Potsdam, this made a lot of brainwork to the Prussian
Postmaster General von Nagler (1770–1846). He said: I send six
to seven mail coaches to Potsdam a day which are not even completely
used. Instead of building a railway there, they should rather pour money
down the drain. The vote of the Bavarian medical board which was asked
about the medical effect of the railway was approximate in such a way:
one should build no railways, because people could thereby cause serious
impairments to themselves. If one built them, however, one should raise
wooden walls at both sides at least, so that those who pass do not become
dizzy by the sight of the rapid trains. This was in 1830.

Another example is the postage
stamp. Rowland Hill (1795–1879), a private citizen in England,
had this idea first, not a practitioner of the postal system. When in
the parliament in London this proposal should be negotiated, the chief
post official argued that the post-office buildings would be too small
because of the increasing mail dispatch, and one had to answer to the
practitioner that the post-office buildings had to comply with the traffic
and not vice versa the traffic with the post-office buildings. The telephone
is also no invention of a practitioner. It was invented by the teacher
Philipp Reis (1834–1874) in Frankfurt on the Main. Then it is
developed further by Graham Bell (1847–1922), a teacher of deaf-mute.
It was invented by real theorists. This was also the case of the electromagnetic
telegraph. It was invented by two scholars, by Gauss (Carl Friedrich
G., 1777–1855, mathematician) and Weber (Wilhelm Eduard W., 1804–1891,
physicist) in Göttingen.

With some great examples
I wanted to show that never the practitioners were those who brought
the real progress of humanity. The practitioners cannot assess what
belongs to the future. They are the real conservatives who counter all
kinds of obstacles to any thought concerning the future. One can feel
a certain accentuation of the exclusive skill and sense of authority
so easily with the practitioners.

I said this in advance to
show that the ideals do not arise from the practical, but are supported
by those who are imbued with a higher spiritual reality. However, this
was only an intermezzo.

You remember the lecture
about the origin of the human being where we as theosophists ascribed
a very early origin to humanity. We search for this origin much farther
back than the scientific documents can lead us. May it seem fantastic
that this origin was traced back up to the separation of the earth from
sun and moon: somebody who becomes engrossed in the method which theosophy
makes available finds that these are no fantastic ideas, but concrete
realities like the tables and chairs in this room. Who becomes engrossed
in the laws of the past that way and sharpens his look with the spiritual
development at the same time can get to know the laws from the knowledge
of the past which belong neither to the past, nor to the present, nor
to the future, but to the all-time. If one has brought it so far that
he has attained the initiation up to the degree which I have characterised
in the talk on the great initiates, then the world laws appear before
the spiritual look, world laws according to which the development takes
place which need, however, the human being to be realised. Just as the
chemist has to mix the substances first to let play the laws of nature,
the human being has also to mix the substances to help the big world
laws to the road of success. On the basis of such world laws, two matters
should occupy us today: the distant future at which we look so that
we do not keep to the few historic millennia and a short interval if
we see into the future with the everyday look.

We want to see into in the
more distant future as we have seen into in the distant past. We also
want to understand our task in the future from the theosophical point
of view. We have seen that another humanity preceded our present humanity.
We went back to the older races which lived under other living conditions
and with other abilities. The task of our race is to develop the inferring
reason. While we have the logical thinking, counting and calculating,
that which enables us to get to know the laws of the external physical
nature and to use them in technology and industry, it was substantially
different with the Atlantean race.

Memory was the basic force
of this race. The present human being can hardly imagine which extent
memory had with the Atlanteans. They could count only a little. Everything
was based on the connection which they formed by memory. For example,
they knew three times seven by memory, but they could not calculate
that. They knew no multiplication tables. Another force which was developed
with them but is to be understood even more difficultly was that they
had a certain influence on the life-force itself. By a particular development
of the willpower they could win an immediate influence over the living,
for example, over the growth of a plant.

If we go back even farther,
we come to a continent which we call Lemuria. The natural sciences admit
this continent which was at the position of the present Indian Ocean,
although they do not assume human beings but lower mammals as population
on it.

We get to quite different
stages of development now. Who has followed the lecture about the earth
evolution some weeks ago knows that we get to a period when the human
being was still a hermaphrodite, when the single being was male and
female at the same time. In myths and legends, this original hermaphroditism
was still preserved in the consciousness of the peoples. The Greeks
originally regarded Zeus as hermaphrodite. One said that he was a beautiful
man and a beautiful maiden at the same time. In the Greek mysteries
the hermaphrodite human being still loomed large; he was put as a unity
of the human being. The uni-sexual human being originated from the process
I have described. We follow up the process as it represents itself to
the seer in the worlds which give an insight into these matters by the
means of practical mysticism to be explained another time.

If we follow up the human
being in such a way, we see that he goes through that again now only
consciously which he already completed unconsciously in former periods.
We meet the human being at that time in such a way that his external
material cover is thin. At that time, the earth was still in a high
temperature state. The substances entered and went out of the human
being; it was like a kind of inhaling and exhaling. He lived that way
without perception moving through the senses; like pictures surging
up and down as with the dreamer, the sensory impressions passed him
by. If such a human being who was basically a soul human approached
an object or being dreamily, clairvoyantly, he could not perceive this
object or this being with the eyes, he could not smell the smell, but
he approached the being, and it was by a force which I cannot further
describe today that a vision rose in him. A world in his soul answered
to the outside events. It was approximate in such a way, as if you have
a clock before you, and you do not perceive the clock but the ticking
of the clock.

Or you topple a chair in
sleep and dream of a duel. This is chaotic today, so that it has no
significance for us. However, this must be transformed again to clairvoyance,
and then it has significance again. If you approached a human being
in those days who had a bad emotion in himself, a picture rose in your
soul that had dark colour nuances and was a reflection but not a perception
of the external reality. The pleasant relation was reflected with bright
nuances. Only by the fact that the human being received the gates of
the senses the soul pictures changed into perception. He connected his
ability to form colour pictures with the outer reality. The physicist
says today that nothing else exists than the vibration of matter, and
colour is the answer of the soul to vibrations. When the human eye was
developed, the human being moved that on the outer objects which surged
up and down as pictures in the soul. Everything that he perceived of
his surroundings was basically nothing else than a spread of the soul
pictures across the outer world.

In the further development
the human being penetrates the higher worlds consciously and not in
fugue states where he perceives the soul-world around him. Nothing else
is initiation than developing up to this level. What the mystic can
already develop today by certain methods in himself is developed in
future with all human beings. This is the nature of the initiate that
he already develops what is revealed to all human beings in future,
and that he can at least indicate the direction of the future ideals
of humanity. The ideals of the initiates thereby have a value that the
unconscious ideals can never have. Then the human being moves between
the soul things as he moves between tables and chairs today. Again and
again I would like to emphasise that it is necessary for that who himself
wants to advance to this level that he is absolutely firm concerning
the developmental stage of humanity on which it stands now: He must
be a person who is able to differentiate between speculative fiction
and reality. Nobody can come to the higher world who indulges every
fantasy but only somebody who stands firmly on the point of view of
development which humanity has attained.

Another state is that in
which the human being starts spiritually beholding or rather hearing
what constitutes the deepness, the nature of the things. This is the
so-called inner word where the things themselves say what they are.
As well as only the human beings themselves can say to us what they
are, there is an inner essentiality of all things. We cannot recognise
this inner essentiality of the things with the reason, we have to creep
into the things, become one with the things. We are able to do this
only with the mind. We must combine with the things spiritually. The
world thereby becomes that sounding world of which Goethe speaks and
which I have often stated so that the human being rises to the higher
regions, to the spiritual world or devachan; to that world in which
the human being stays between death and a new birth. These are the worlds
between death and a new birth.

Our earth is in its fourth
cycle or in its fourth round. It has three rounds behind it. Three following
rounds develop higher capabilities of the human being. What I have just
described forms soon; and the principal race which follows ours has
substantially different qualities. In the middle of that period it produces
a human race which does not penetrate the physical world as deeply as
ours and which casts off the uni-sexuality and becomes hermaphrodite.
Then it will higher develop, until the development concludes. This will
be in the astral. Then it will go through two cycles again. humanity
has still to complete three such cycles. But we can only touch the next
two ones.

We have to get the task
of the present human cycle clear in our mind at first. We progress best
of all if we put the question to ourselves: what task does the human
being have on earth with his inferring reason? Clairvoyance and clairaudience
are states that belong to former and later states of development. The
human being now has the task to stand firmly in the physical life, so
that humanity can get its goal. Theosophy should not lead us away from
the physical basis; theosophy rises from the physical earth because
it is also the expression of the astral and spiritual worlds. We do
not want to lead to anything uncertain, unclear, we do not want to lead
away from the physical reality, but we want to lead this physical reality
to the right understanding, to the right comprehension. What stands
behind the physical reality points to the task of the human being in
the present cycle of development.

Consider what happens now.
We call the present cycle the mineral one because the human being deals
with the mineral world. The naturalist says: we cannot yet understand
the plant world and considers the plant as a sum of mineral processes.
He proceeds also with the animal that way. Even if this is a caricature
of a world view, nevertheless, something forms the basis of the thing.
He combines with his reason what is side by side in space and one after
the other in time. Everywhere it is the reason which works on the dead,
on the unliving and composes the parts. Begin with the machine and lead
it up to a piece of art: the human being has this task in the present
cycle of development, and he will complete it, so that he transforms
the whole earth into his piece of art.

This is the task which the
human being has for the future. As long as one atom is there which the
human being has not worked through with his forces, the human task on
earth is not yet completed. Who pursues the newest progress of electricity
knows how the naturalist can have a look at the smallest parts of the
mineral world because he controls the electric force still almost unknown
fifty years ago. His task is to transform the unliving into a big piece
of art. Hence, pieces of art existed long before the historical times,
long before the Egyptians. Pursue this, and you understand that the
present cycle signifies the spiritualisation of the whole mineral nature.
Already the sensible naturalist says to us that it is not inconceivable
according to our present knowledge that a time comes when the human
beings are able to go even deeper into the nature of the material. This
is a certain future perspective.

To those who have occupied
themselves with physics a principle is memorable: future prospects are
obtained because a big part of our technical work is performed applying
heat, by conversion of heat to work. The theorist of heat shows us that
always only a certain part of heat can be transformed into work or into
that what is technically useful. If you heat a vapour machine, you cannot
use all heat to create forces of locomotion. Imagine now that always
heat is used for the work but a part of heat cannot be converted into
work and remains behind. This is the state of heat which the heat engineer,
the theorist of heat can show as a kind of death of our physical earth.
There someone argues who occupies himself with the phenomena of life
that then possibly the point in time may have come that life itself
intervenes: that living machinery which masters the molecules and atoms
quite differently with which we move our arm and set the brain in motion.
This force could be able to work deeper on the material nature than
the forces of transformation we know today.

This shows you an outlook
that is not only a picture but something concrete and real for the clairvoyant
who can pursue the spirit of development: He sees the whole earth transforming
itself to a work of art. If this is achieved, then the human being has
no longer anything to do in the mineral world, then he becomes free
from all sides, then he can freely move, his soul does no longer stumble
against the objects. This is the time when the earth enters the so-called
astral state. As today already the engineer masters the outside world
if he produces the machine which is filled with his mind, it is also
with the human being. All that is there is the immediate product of
his actions. We do not need to perceive what is our action what we ourselves
formed. The senses have transformed themselves, and the astral state
enters. This is the outlook: the mineral world stops with our earth
cycle. Hence, we call the next cycle which the human being will finish,
the cycle of plant existence. The whole earth will have cast off its
mineral nature, and the human being will intervene like now with the
mind in the mineral in the living with his soul-force. Then he will
be the master of the plant world on a higher level, as he is now master
of the mineral world. Then we get to that stage when the human being
lives on a quite lively earth. However, we want to take this picture
only as an approximate one; we want to be content to have obtained an
outlook of the next cycle.

With it you have seen that
the human being is on a course that leads him to another state absolutely
different from ours that in him forces of such a kind are that can take
on quite different forms in future. However, at the same time for somebody,
who understands this, a feeling, a sensation combines with it which
is basic for our whole life: what does the human being become if we
consider him as a spring of such future forces? We face the human being
quite differently about whom we know that the seed of this future human
being slumbers in him. There our attitude toward him changes into the
feeling that we have any human being as an unsolved riddle before ourselves.
Deeper and deeper we would want to descend into the layers of the human
nature because we know that they entail such deep things.

The theories are not important,
even not that anybody imagines the plant cycle, but that we be in awe
of any human individuality. Facing the human being as a god, who wants
to leave his cover, we have understood something of the theosophical
life, the theosophical life matters and not the theories. If we have
certain ideas which show us what the human being can become and what
he contains in himself, then our heart fills with that true love of
the divine human being that the theosophical world view wants to accomplish.
If we think it that way, we only understand the first principle of the
Theosophical Society: forming the core of a brotherhood without differentiating
sex, colour and denomination. What do these differences mean here?

You probably keep on asking:
which significance have these images of humanity? How does this great
ideal relate to our tasks? Is it not anything that belongs to a cloud-cuckoo-land,
because it belongs to a future we do not experience? The human being
has to utilise what he develops in himself. It is not without reason
whether he lives on with the feelings, which I have just explained,
or whether he lives into future only touching in the dark. Just as the
plant bears the seed in itself of that which it is next year, the human
being has to bear his future as a seed in himself. He can make this
seed not full enough of content, not big enough. This applies also in
the present. Since you have occupied yourselves with the social ideals
and the plans for the near future of humanity, you know that almost
anybody who reflects it has his own social ideal.

You ask yourselves if you
look deeper into these matters: why do these ideals have so little power
of persuasion? All the matters do not work and do not fit together.
Both those who try to establish ideals of the future in a utopian way
and those who want to do it with practical reason are not able to get
to really great and radical points of view. All the social ideas, even
the belief of big comprehensive world parties one can state this from
profound points of view which are pronounced out of the consciousness
of the sensuous world will never have any practical value. After fifty
years, people will be surprised of these figments of imagination. The
social ideal cannot be invented. Our thoughts or that which we obtain
from our opinions, from our reason cannot form the basis of any social
ideal. One has just to say: no social theory, whatsoever it may be,
is fit to serve the welfare of humanity.

However, that is hard to
verify. On the other side, consider the point in time in which we stand:
The present has formed the personality. The personality is the characteristic,
the significant of the human being. All the other differentiations,
even that of man and woman, are overcome there. There is only the personality
without any differentiation. We keep this in mind that humanity had
to go through this point and that theosophy calls this personality lower
manas: this is the power of thinking relating to the immediate world.
The human being is a personality as far as he belongs to the sensuous
world, and his combining reason belongs to the sensuous world, too.
We have to raise everything to a higher stage that the human being can
think with his reason and raises his personality if we want to understand
it in its true being. That is why we also make a distinction between
personality and individuality, between lower and higher manas. What
is, actually, this lower manas?

Take the difference that
exists between a modern human being and a simple barbarian who grinds
the grains between two stones to prepare flour, and bakes bread then
from it et etcetera With a very small expense of mental force the barbarian
manages what fulfils his bodily needs. But civilisation advances, and
what do we do basically in our time? We telegraph to America and let
the same products come which the barbarian ground himself. All the technical
understanding, what else is it than a detour to satisfy the animal needs?
Still consider whether the reason accomplishes a lot of other things
than to satisfy the everyday bodily needs. Does the reason become, therefore,
anything higher, while it constructs ships, railways, telephones et
etcetera if it produces nothing else than things to satisfy the everyday
needs of the human being?

The reason is only a detour
and does not lead out of the sensory world. Where, however, the spiritual
world illumines this world: in the great works of art, in the original
ideas which exceed the everyday needs, or where something of theosophy
shines, then the human mind does not become only a manufacturer of that
which is around it, but then it is a channel through which the spirit
flows into the world. It brings something productive into this world.
Every single human being is a channel through which a spiritual world
pours forth. As long as the human being only seeks for the satisfaction
of his needs, he is a personality. If he exceeds that, he is an individuality.
We can find this spring only in the single individual; the human being
is the mediator between the spiritual and sensory worlds, the human
being mediates between both. This is the double way we can face the
human being.

As personalities we all
are on a par: the reason is developed somewhat less with the one somewhat
more with the other. But that does not apply to the individuality. There
the human being becomes a particular character; there everybody brings
in something particular for his mission. If I want to know what he has
to do as a personality in the world, what he can be on account of his
genuineness as individuality, and then I have to wait, until through
this channel something pours into this world from the spiritual world.
If this influence is expected to take place, we have to regard every
human being as an unsolved riddle. Through any single individuality
the original spiritual force flows towards us.

As long as we consider the
human being as a personality, we can control him: if we speak of general
duties and rights, we speak of the personality. If we speak, however,
of the individuality, we cannot squeeze the human being into a form;
he must be the support of his genuineness. The human beings who live
out their individualities know what humanity experiences in ten years.
I am not allowed for my part to determine the child whom I educate,
but I have to start from its mysterious inside that is quite unknown
to me. If we want a social order, the single individualities must co-operate,
and then everybody must be able to develop in his freedom. If we establish
a social ideal, we bind this personality to this place, that personality
to that place. The sum of that what exists is simply thrown together:
however, nothing new comes into the world. Therefore, individualities
have to go in; the great individualities must throw in their impact.
There must be not laws, social programs from ideals of reason, but social
brotherly attitude has to originate.

Only one social attitude
can help us, the attitude that we face every being as individuality.
We have always to realise that every human being has something to say
to us. Every human being has something to say to us. We do need a social
attitude, not social programs. This is absolutely real and practical.
It is something that one can express in this talk, and it is that which
theosophy establishes as a great future ideal. With it theosophy gains
an immediate practical significance. If theosophy enters life, we give
up squeezing everything into rules and regulations; we give up judging
by norms, we accept the human being as a free and individual human being.

Then we realise that we
fulfil our task if we put the right person to the right place. We do
no longer ask: is he the best teacher who masters the teaching substance
best, but we ask: which human being is he? One has to develop a fine
feeling, maybe a clairvoyant talent whether the human being in question
is with his being at his right place whether he is as a human being
on his place. Somebody can understand his subjects of instruction completely;
he can be a mine of information but unfit to teach, because he does
not know what streams out of the human being what elicits the individuality
of the other human being. Not until we refrain from rules and regulations
and ask which human being is he, and put the best human being to the
place where he is needed, we fulfil the ideals in ourselves which theosophy
has brought. Somebody can also know a lot as a doctor but, nevertheless,
it is crucial in the end facing the sick person which human being the
doctor is. If theosophy intervenes directly in life, it must be that
way.

Answer to Question

Question: What do you think of Dr. Eugen Heinrich Schmitt (1851–1916,
philosopher)?

He faces theosophy friendly, has written something
about theosophy, after he had published the writing about the secret
of Hegel's dialectic. However, his way of thinking is an overly
mathematical one, it is too constructive-mathematical, and is not
enough based on observation. His way of thinking is also not enough
tolerant toward other views.

Question: Where from do we know anything of the Atlanteans and
Lemurians?

From the Akasha Chronicle. These are traces which
any action leaves behind and which one can read long times backward.
This Akasha Chronicle is absolutely a reality for that who can read
it. However, it is difficult to read, and, besides, one is easily
exposed to mistakes. To give an approximate idea of it the following
may be said. If I speak here, the word fills the airspace. The oscillations
correspond to the words. Who could not hear my words, but would be
able to study the oscillations of the air, would be able to construct
my words from the oscillations.

In the air these oscillations remain only a short
time. In the astral substance, however, they survive longer. If the
human being lives as a dreaming in such a way as the human being lives
in the external reality, he can also see the psychic in the outer
reality, he can also pursue the earth origin up to the astral origin
of the earth. If the human being has attained the continuity of consciousness,
and if he has this continuing consciousness during the night in the
dream, he can see the concatenation of worlds, their origin and decay.

Question: What do you think of Karl Marx and his work?

What Karl Marx performed, applies to the time from
the 16-th century till this day. It encloses the time of the emerging
modern economic life and the developing industrialism. As far as production,
consumption and what is connected with it is considered, theosophy
can agree with Marx. However, the mistake which the Marxist makes
is that he attributes everything to class struggle. It is a misunderstanding
of the facts. The human being patterns, not the surroundings, not
the relations of production. Can anybody state that the invention
of the differential calculus depended on the relations of production?
Certainly not. What has been performed, however, with the help of
the differential calculus?

Question: Can a theosophist be a social democrat?

Yes, if he is also a theosophist with every step.
Everybody has to decide for himself whether the social-democratic
party is the desirable for the next time,

Question: Which task has art concerning the spiritual development
of humanity?

The same as other activities. It helps to transform
the whole world into a work of art, although also the single piece
of art passes. However, we can ask whether these single pieces of
art have no significance, and then we must say from the theosophical
point of view that two things are to be considered with such a piece
of art:

First the piece of art in space and secondly the
force of the human being which had an effect. The force of the human
being is the remaining. Art is something that has a still much higher
significance.

Question: How does theosophy position itself to the Last Judgement
and to the eternal punishments?

There are no eternal punishments in the theosophical
view. There are only stages of development, karmic effects. However,
the Last Judgement has a different significance. It signifies a certain
point in time of that round I have spoken of in the talk. In this
round the human being attains a certain level where he no longer gets
any external impulse where he has overcome the sensuous completely
where he has spiritualised the mineral-physical. What he has gained
in the spiritual life appears as his tendency appears in the spirit.
Hence, his tendency will be expressed in the external figure. The
human being will carry that external figure which he himself has formed
by his karma. The Last Judgement signifies nothing else than that
this is impressed to everybody what he has in his soul. The human
being can today hide what lives in his soul, then, however, this will
no longer be the case.

Question: How does patriotism harmonise with the general brotherhood?

Patriotism is justified on a certain stage of development.
What we put as the ideal of brotherliness is something bridging over.
Both are compatible with each other. The activity of reason can have
also individual moments, and because we mull over the individuality
a certain moment happens there. Not any human being has his own logic,
because the logic is something universal, nothing individual. However,
these activities of reason take on an individual colouring. But the
reason is not the individual.

Question: Why can a madman not control himself?

The madman is physically ill at first. The opposite
of being mad is called being prudent that is to be able to harmonise
his inner life with the surroundings. Who is not able to produce this
harmony seems to be mad. If you wanted to behave on Mars as on earth,
you would be a Martian madman.

Question: What do you think of the American books about hypnotism,
magnetism?

What has a real significance is not to be found in
these books. For the rest, these matters often are disadvantageous
concerning health and in other ways as well. I can only advise against
such matters the sharpest from the theosophical point of view.

Question: Has Christ really lived hundred years before the year
one?

I stand here on the orthodox point of view. Others
have made a mistake there to my way of thinking.